Two Columbia University janitors say they were assaulted and their civil rights were violated by a group of pro-Palestinian protesters who occupied a building on the university’s Manhattan campus last year, according to a federal lawsuit.

Janitors Mariano Torres and Lester Wilson, who were working in Hamilton Hall last year when protesters occupied the building, demand a jury trial to determine damages for medical care and attention needed to alleviate “serious and severe psychological and emotional trauma and mental and physical anguish,” says the complaint filed Friday in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Torres ...